


what he deserves

by flybluejay



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Actor Ben Solo, Actor Rey (Star Wars), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cowgirl Position, Creampie, Door Sex, Dry Humping, Dry Orgasm, Dry Sex, Emotional Sex, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Forehead Touching, Grinding, HEA Guaranteed, Hotel Sex, Lap Sex, Light Angst, Lingerie, Love at First Sight, Making Out, Misunderstandings, Naked Female Clothed Male, No Pregnancy, Older Man/Younger Woman, One Night Stands, POV Ben Solo, POV Third Person Limited, Penetrative Sex, Penis In Vagina Sex, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Safe to Read if Triggered by Pregnancy, Sex, Smut, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unsafe Sex, Vaginal Penetration, Vaginal Sex, Wall Sex, Woman on Top, female on top
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:34:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28410228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flybluejay/pseuds/flybluejay
Summary: They’ve never met before, but the mutual attraction is so obvious it’s like an inside joke or a magic trick is happening between the two of them as they look dumbly, ecstatically, at each other for the first time.What was the word that the reviews used?Ah, yes.Chemistry.Sparks fly when actor Ben Solo meets unknown Rey Niima at a film festival.
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 42
Kudos: 196
Collections: Reylo Readers & Writers - The Marvellous Moodboard Event





	what he deserves

“Who is _that?”_

His hands are already moving, like they always do when he’s caught off-guard. His fingers twitch at the knot of his bowtie as his brow narrows in concentration.

The photographer gives only a cursory glance before readjusting his face behind the camera body. “That’s Rey Niima, sir. Can you look — actually, no. Stay just like that … don’t move a muscle.”

And that was how he was forced to stare unblinkingly down at the woman he hadn’t seen in a year — the woman he had wanted to see almost every day since. The name Rey repeats in his head till he can’t hear anything else.

“I need to get down there.” Ben tries and fails to sound nonchalant as the photographer takes final shots of him adjusting his tux jacket.

“Of course, sir. The festival will be starting soon, and they’ll be screening your film near the start.”

Ben keeps his fists clenched in his pockets as he follows the photographer down the stairs, till he veers off in the opposite direction from the crowd, toward where he had last seen Rey. _Rey Niima._

She must have seen him before he does, because by the time he reaches her she’s already gathering up her skirts and turning hastily away from him.

She looks the same, but infinitely different. Her hair is longer, let down past her shoulders and curled loosely over her collarbones. The pink evening gown has a cutout at her waist and a slit all the way up her leg, revealing a long, muscled thigh. She looks feminine and healthy and young and gorgeous.

“Don’t you have somewhere you need to be?” Her words are a guarded snarl, but she still has the most seductive mouth he has ever seen. Her bright red lip color is both a magnet and a warning.

“I didn’t know you would be here.”

_I didn’t know, I didn’t know. I didn’t know so many things._

_I didn’t know how much I needed you to understand. Didn’t know it would be terrifying to live without you._

“I didn’t come for _you.”_ Her mouth, still perfect, curls in sorrow, her dimples appearing and reappearing.

He no longer has time for a life without her. He cuts to the chase.

“Why did you go, Rey?”

* * *

_One year earlier._

The room is huge, and filled with conversation that rises to the ceiling. He’s been to so many of these film festivals over the last six years that he’s lost count, aggressive as he is about taking on projects that bring him strategically into the limelight.

He’s worked hard, but it feels like it’s still not enough, and, surprise of all surprises, he is bored tonight. Restless.

It’s not that he’s a spoiled brat, complaining about having to eat food that’s been too carefully curated for the millionth meal in a row. No, he wasn’t raised like that, doesn’t know how to be anything other than admiring of all the trappings of fame now surrounding his life.

No, it was more that he was dissatisfied, filled with uncertainty and an adult sort of emptiness. Everything was too perfect; his every need too easily met and fulfilled. He is near desperate to feel something beyond pampered and admired.

He wants to be _seen._

He wants the spaces in him that he doesn’t know are empty to be filled by someone who sees him more clearly than he can.

He is greedy in that way. But he never blames himself for being afraid. _Isn’t_ everyone _afraid of being alive?_ he thinks to himself.

And that exact moment is when she walks in.

She’s dressed as part of the catering staff, in an all-black cocktail dress and sturdy black heels that are plain but of considerable height. She herself is tall enough that he can see her clearly as she sweeps around the tables, lips pursed as she examines each place setting.

If he were to glance away, he could pretend that she was unexceptional and move on. But there’s some sort of lively animation in the speed at which she steps, something about the way the corners of her lips look like she’s about to smile, even when she’s not ... and as she turns her head, moving from table to table, there’s something about the way he feels noticed by her even when she is not looking at him.

When she rounds their table, he catches her eye and quirks an eyebrow at her. His jaw is angled into something like a smirk, close-mouthed and lopsided and twitchingly eager for her response.

He has no idea what he’s going to say to her when she walks over, and he has no idea why his heart is beating so mindlessly fast.

She picks up on his anxiety all-too-immediately, though not in the way he was expecting.

“Did you need something, sir?” Her voice is full and rich, with a clear British accent. She keeps her volume low and brings her head down to his so she can hear him over the din. Her hair is swept up from her neck in a tasteful, complex updo, and this close, he can smell the perfume behind her ear. But her face is turned so that he can’t see her eyes: just the line of her jawbone and a dimple as she patiently smiles.

He panics. He hadn’t thought this far ahead.

“No, no, I-I’m sorry, what was your name?”

 _“My_ name, sir?”

“You’re probably not allowed to — these events, the protocol is so —”

“I’m Rey, Mr. Solo. Let me know if you need anything.” He catches her quick, toothy smile, genuinely friendly and with flawlessly straight teeth, and he stares as she whisks away to attend to another table.

Someone gets on stage and starts talking. The noise of the crowd quiets down to an appreciative hum as the other guests react to the speaker’s jokes and comments, but the noise in Ben’s head has reached unprecedented levels.

He stares at the stage, unmoving, except for the hand that worries at his water glass, thumb and index finger twitching and twisting at the base.

It takes five or ten minutes for her to start making her rounds again, this time followed by other servers pushing carts of delicate-looking desserts. The hall they’re in feels huge, and he feels even tinier under the size of it when he thinks about how far she has to travel to reach him.

Finally, stepping carefully, she passes close enough for him to throw out a hand in an approximation of a wave. She immediately comes closer.

“Did you figure out what you need, sir?”

And then she turns her head and they … _see_ each other.

His face is tilted up toward hers, and she is bent generously next to him with both hands on her knees, and when they look into each other’s eyes for the first time, they are both immediately smiling: stupid, smug, obvious grins that are so wide and significant it’s impossible for them to hide from each other ever again. They’ve never met before, but the mutual attraction is so obvious it’s like an inside joke or a magic trick is happening between the two of them as they look dumbly, ecstatically, at each other for the first time.

What was the word that the reviews used?

Ah, yes.

_Chemistry._

He can tell she senses it because she immediately starts apologizing. “Oh my god, I’m such an idiot —”

“No, I called you over here —”

He knows a serious face suits him better for pictures, but he can’t seem to master that as he keeps grinning like an idiot. “I have, um,” he stutters awkwardly, nearly laughing with the absurdity of it all, “I have a special request.”

“Well, I’d be happy to accommodate it.” Her voice is calmer now, and she’s gained more control of herself than he has, but the expression on her face is still too intimate and eager. She’s gazing straight into his eyes, but somehow he knows she’s taking in his whole body: appraising, measuring, and liking what she sees.

“I, um.” He hesitates, stunned by his own forwardness. “Can I meet you —”

“You can meet me just outside the kitchen. On your way to the men’s room.” She seemed to be able to tell he wouldn’t know a place to suggest, because she essentially interrupts him to get the words out.

He blinks and she’s gone, halfway across the room with her heels quietly clip-clopping under the speaker’s amplified voice.

He is impatient for this person’s talk to end, fingers constantly twitching on his thighs. He downs his water.

 _Rey. Rey. Rey,_ he repeats to himself.

Finally, everyone is standing and applauding and he’s nodding to the rest of the table to excuse himself, buttoning his jacket with one hand as he goes.

_Rey. Rey. Rey._

He doesn’t know whether or not he finds the kitchen. All he knows is that he sees her silhouette in a shadowy hallway, backlit by the white tile of what could be a kitchen.

They’ve literally just met, but he’d bet his career on the fact that he’d be able to recognize her body anywhere.

In the dark he stands much too close to her, emboldened by the fact that they can’t quite see each other well. She looks up at him, eyes wide, and doesn’t speak as he walks her back one step, then another, till her hands find the wall and her palms flatten against the wallpaper. He takes yet another step toward her, close enough for her to breathe in his cologne and close enough for him to surround her waist with his arms and bracket her in.

It’s only when she snorts and guffaws quietly, flawless makeup broken up by deep crinkles by her eyes, that he makes a choked noise and goes straight for her neck, his hands attaching to the curve of her hips like he owns them. He feels like the most prestigious of sculptors, molding his hands to the roundness of her backside as his fingers grip at the very top of her ass cheeks.

She is still giggling, making incredulous and delighted noises with her head resting on his shoulder as his lips find the muscles of her neck.

“Oh, _god,_ what is this?” She seems to laugh and moan at the same time.

He manages a weak chuckle that sounds more like a groan before skimming his hands up to the underside of her breasts, still sucking behind her ear. At that, she gasps, suddenly caught off guard, and her arms fling themselves around his neck to steady herself. He takes the opportunity to pull her that much closer into him, and only too late does he realize ...

She breathes in harshly as his erection grazes her thigh. Quickly, she leans back to take herself just out of his reach. The look she gives him is heated and tense, the pink in her cheeks and panting, hungry lips at odds with the hint of misgiving in her eyes.

He hates how empty his hands feel without her spine beneath his fingers.

“I-I’m sorry.” This time he is the one to apologize. He knows his face must be remorseful, yet he can _feel_ the subconscious connection he has with her drawing her back to him, even now. The gravitational pull of him to her is fiercer than the pull of the sun to the moon. Yet she tries to pull against it, tries to fight the inevitable.

“No. I can’t do this. I’m working,” she hisses. Her sentences follow each other in quick succession, as though reciting reasons in her head will help her stop what’s already happening.

He may be an actor, able to inhabit the brazen confidence his characters have, but he’s always tried to adopt a more honest sort of sincerity to get him through everyday conversations. He runs a hand through his hair, finally accepting the fact that she’s going to try to make him explain the inexplicable and justify their strange and immediate connection to each other.

“Fuck it,” he begins eloquently, and then they’re reaching for each other again.

This time, she is the one kissing him. Her mouth moves fiercely, completely out of coordination with his, and he’s kissed a great deal of women, but very few women have ever kissed _him._ Her hands comb urgently into his hair, completely mussing the back of it more than his stylist already has, until one of her hands dips down to palm his erection very tentatively and curiously, as though she doubts its existence.

At her touch, he inhales sharply, too loud into her mouth, and she covers his mouth with her hand at the same time that someone in the kitchen glances worriedly at them, outlined in shadow in the hallway. It looks like the person wants to say something, but instead he moves away to his next task.

“Didn’t realize you were going to be so loud,” she scolds in a low voice. “Although on second thought, I should have known. Someone as massive as you doesn’t have a quiet voice in bed.” She keeps her hand over his mouth as she adopts a pleasant, conversational tone. There is enough light spilling from the kitchen for him to see her dilated pupils, rimmed by irises that could be dark green or hazel.

She continues. “I have to stay to clean up while they play the films. I’m assuming you have a room in the hotel here?” She pauses to allow him to nod, her hand still covering his mouth.

He holds up one finger to signal her to wait, and then pulls his wallet out of his pocket and extracts the extra room key. He lifts it up to offer it to her and points to his room number written on the card sleeve.

When she takes the card and nods, he closes his eyes and presses his lips against her palm in a kiss.

It’s dark, but he can tell she’s blushing. She bites back a smile.

“I don’t watch the films,” is the first thing he says when she lowers her hand. “I hate … I never watch myself on screen.”

“Well, I still have to clean up,” she reminds him matter-of-factly. “But I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

He would tell her he’ll be waiting for her, but her heels are already clacking away. He stares at her ass as she goes, a rare moment of self-indulgence in which he imagines what is there — or not there — beneath the taut, stretching fabric.

He paces the hallway for a few minutes with his hands on his hips to allow himself to come down.

* * *

Laughing and smiling seem to be her default expressions around him, because as soon as the key clicks and she walks into the room, his hands are on her thighs and he is lifting her around his hips as she gasps and giggles at the perfect absurdity of it all.

“Should I still call you Mr. Solo?” is the first thing she says when she catches her breath.

“Call me whatever you want.” All of this is said into the space underneath her chin as his mouth explores everything of her neck that he missed before.

“I _want_ to call you mine,” she says, so quietly he almost misses it. He stops and pulls back, still holding her ass in his cupped palms as her legs, still wearing her heels, tighten hesitantly around his waist.

The doubt in her eyes makes him rush to reassure her with the words he didn’t think he’d need to say. “You can.” He clears his throat. “My name is Ben, and I’m yours.”

Her hands claw over his back and chest as they writhe up and down against the wall, fully clothed with their tongues shoved deep into each other’s mouths. Her pussy feels warm as she grinds it against his white shirt, and he clumsily flings his suit jacket off, first one arm jerking wildly, then the other as he makes sure to support her ass with a free hand as he goes.

“You’re —” He can’t think of a word.

The first thing that comes to mind is _beautiful._

The second word that comes to mind is _mine._

“Wait, Ben, wait.” She breaks off, panting. “Let me take my heels off.”

Unbidden, he drops to his knees and helps her out of them one foot at a time. He lets them both dangle from his fingers, and when he straightens to his full height, she straightens too, all the way up onto her tiptoes till her hands rest on his shoulders. She presses a chaste kiss onto his nose.

He’s always thought that his nose and other parts of him were too big, but right now his size feels just about right as she trails kisses over his cupid’s bow and earlobes.

As if by unspoken agreement, she clambers back up onto him. One-handed, he slides his forearm below her ass, lifting her again before depositing her on the bed. Internally, he blesses the grueling workouts he’s had to do for his last few films.

“Do you mind?” she says primly. She turns to him, showing him a zipper on the side of her dress.

One rough pull reveals that she wears no bra: just a lacy red thong that sits high on her hip bones.

He sits back, stunned.

He can’t believe it. Can’t believe _her._

“The one smart thing I did today,” she quips nervously as she takes in his reaction.

That stops him, a second after he decided he’s in the mood to rip the thong off her tonight. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, besides you, today’s been a bust, all things considered.” She folds one leg under her, letting the other dangle off the foot of the bed. She stills wears the dress, letting it crumple around her figure with the zipper undone and her side exposed.

He adjusts his crotch stiffly before taking a seat next to her, and she looks at him sympathetically before shrugging. “Sorry. You asked.”

“Yeah, I did.” He stares at her to let her continue.

“I was supposed to meet someone today, you know? Someone who could help me get my first real role. I’ve been in some independent films, but not much else.” She swings her foot back and forth, letting it graze his calf under his suit pants. Her gaze is lowered to the ground, brow wrinkled in thought. “I don’t know how else to break past whatever low point I’ve hit.”

“I can help you,” he hears himself say instinctively. “Tell me what you need, and I can help you.”

“Just a start,” she replies eagerly. Her eyes are bright when she turns to him. “Just someone you know who’s willing to give someone new a chance.”

Immediately he stands, his erection making his stance a bit wide, and scribbles a name and number onto a pad of paper on the desk. “My agent.” He waves the paper at her before setting it firmly on the table. “Call her tomorrow and tell her I wanted her to talk to you.”

She gapes. “Was it really that easy, then?” She throws up her hands for the benefit of an invisible audience. “All I had to do was wear proper work attire and be attentive to a guest?” She gives him a look out of the corner of her eye, biting her lip with a smile till her dimple shows.

“And wear a red thong,” he amends, smiling. His own voice is light and more teasing than he’s heard it in a long time.

One moment, she is laughing, eyes glinting below her long lashes. The next, she is solemn and settling into his lap. Her knees are over his hips as she sits, cat-like and trembling with energy. He can’t look at her any other way than tenderly, can’t channel anything but the most surprising amount of softness into the way he lets his eyes tumble head over heels into her.

“I don’t understand,” she whispers, and now her eyes are on him, a little frightened and far too affectionate for two strangers who have just met. “Why are you like this with me? Why are we like this with each other?”

And Ben is tired, just so tired of having to explain things to himself and having to hide the sneaking feeling that his world doesn’t quite make sense in the way he wants it to.

“Because you’re mine,” he tells her very seriously. “I thought it was obvious.”

“Don’t leave me,” she begs, and unshed tears glisten in her eyes. “I couldn’t bear it.”

“Neither could I,” he swears, and then his fingers pull her dress apart. She wriggles off him to let it drop to the floor, and as she climbs back atop him his hands find her thong.

In one smooth motion, he tugs and destroys with more joy than he’s had in a very long time.

* * *

Her thighs can’t stretch wide enough to accommodate the girth of his torso, but it makes no difference to him because he can prop his right leg on the floor and use the leverage to skewer her open all the same.

And he does just that, half-standing as he bears down on her like a stallion while she lays squirming and rocking on her back. His throat is thick with a knot of desire, and he is panting, hair dripping sweat onto her abs.

Suddenly, her cunt molds firmly around him, and he gasps. “Holy _fuck.”_

She had writhed naked on his lap without him ever taking out his cock. He had been pitifully hard, and leaking, too, in his tailored suit pants worth thousands of dollars. Yet there was nothing more valuable than seeing Rey’s expression as she came undone, an almost panicked expression crossing her face as she worked herself to completion on his crotch with all of his clothes still on.

But now he is unbuttoned, just his cock jutting out above his boxers and his stained, unzipped pants as he thrusts, breathing labored to match the labored desperation in his heart.

 _“God,”_ he cries loudly, happily. “Have you done this before?”

Like much of what he says, he regrets the question almost as soon as it leaves his mouth, but she’s already heard him ask it. Besides, he’s already guilty, already caught in the act of forcing his uncertainty and defeat, his pain and his fear, between her open legs and her upturned arms.

What’s one more thing that shows her just how lonely he really is?

She ignores his question and pushes her hips up to his determinedly, eliciting a sharp groan as he reaches what feels like the very end of her channel.

“Will you remember me, Ben?”

In response, he pushes _hard_ with his hips. When she screams, he purses his lips in an unyielding line.

“Don’t forget me, Ben,” she pants to no one as he pulls back, preparing to ram her again. “Never forget me.”

“Are you _insane?”_ He can’t believe his ears. To think that she doesn’t realize what she makes him feel … that she thinks there is a person out there who can replace who she is to him …

As if to make his point with his body, he pushes himself back into her with even greater force. She yelps when her head taps the headboard with a dull thud.

He freezes. “Shit. Are you okay?”

She nods, biting back a laugh, and then the only sounds filling the room are his grunts, her cries, and the bed creaking as he pushes inside her again and again.

When he comes, his eyes roll back into his head and he loses his footing on the floor. He staggers forward, and his forearms land on either side of her torso, barely keeping himself from falling straight onto her. She lifts her hands onto his pecs as her legs go around his waist, and with an upward jerk of her hips she clenches on him. It feels as though she is milking him dry.

“Unnnnh, _fuck._ Rey, baby ...” he says tenderly into her hair.

He lifts his now-trembling standing leg onto the bed and, still inside her, falls asleep immediately out of sheer, unadulterated relief.

* * *

He only wakes because she is whispering his name very softly as she curls strands of his hair around her fingers again and again. Underneath him, she is propped against the headboard, her legs still open where his dick has slipped out.

_“Ben. Ben. Benjamin Solo.”_

Her voice is quieter than the sound of his own breathing. He feels her pulling his white shirt down his arms and hears the clink of his belt as she slides it off through the loops.

He settles his head even deeper between her breasts and lazily notices the sun has set outside before deciding he wants to go back to sleep. Now that he’s found her, he can deal with the world another day … or, perhaps, never.

His eyes have almost closed when he hears, so quietly it is almost a dream:

_“Rey. Rey Solo. Rey.”_

At that, his heart explodes in his chest. He squeezes his eyes shut hurriedly and tries not to move for fear of puncturing this new and perfect world he’s fallen into.

She seems to know he is awake, because she asks, “Have you done this before?” in a quiet, serious voice. In her voice he can hear her serious eyes. His question from earlier has clearly been haunting her.

He pretends to snore over-exaggeratedly, just to get her to laugh again.

 _“Ben.”_ She doesn’t let him off that easily, voice still as penetrating and clear as a bell tone.

He sits up, finding he has been laying between her legs as she sits against the headboard. She levels him with a stare, head tilted expectantly. Her hair is mussed over her shoulders, mouth as tantalizing as ever. He takes a second to run his eyes along her naked torso before deciding how to answer.

“Yes.” He clears his throat. “I have done this before.”

Nothing in her face or body language shifts in the slightest, but a sudden sense of heartbreak starts leaking into the space between them.

“Have you?” he asks quietly. “Done this before?”

Again, nothing in her face or body changes, but her quiet, accented “Yes” is a smooth dart of fast-acting poison to his heart.

He has to fix it. “But it doesn’t make sense,” he says as he reaches out to pull her toward him, “for me to ever do it again.” She is trying to bat his hands away, but he wraps his legs around her and folds them in to keep her pinned there. “Unless it’s with you,” he amends, nose brushing against her ear.

“You don’t even _know_ me, Ben!” she protests half-heartedly.

“That’s not fair,” he says decidedly. She’s stopped wriggling in his lap, neck partially turned as though she’s listening carefully to what he’s about to say. Between his next words, he presses his open lips into her shoulder so firmly that his teeth touch her skin in a warm kiss.

“I do know you.” _Kiss._ “And I want to know you more.” _Kiss._

“Want to know every part of you.” _Kiss._

“‘Cause I like to know —” _Kiss._ “I like to know what’s mine.”

He’s never been this vulnerable, never felt this romantic. He grins against the back of her neck at how ridiculous he feels, and how little he cares about any and all of it.

She whips around, appalled and blushing excitedly. “Well, aren’t you an arrogant —”

Whatever arrogant thing he is, he doesn’t hear, because he has pushed her down against the mattress and is climbing over her like a jungle cat, muscles tensing and relaxing as his lips brush her cheeks and eyelashes.

“I am,” he agrees amiably, breathlessly. “So arrogant, self-conscious.” He moans when her hands find his hardness. She grips him through the cloth, her eyes so determined that she looks feral as she once again opens her legs to him. “So full of myself,” he groans out eagerly.

After that confession, neither of them find it necessary to say another word, but she does seem to find it necessary to push him onto his back. She climbs on top of him and impales herself on him over and over, till he is shouting like he needs everyone on that floor of the hotel to know that _this, this_ is the girl, and he’s found her; _at last,_ he’s found her ...

This isn’t a movie, isn’t a set. For Ben, this is real. His face is contorted into the least attractive of his expressions and he can feel his own cum sliding slowly down his thighs. Her face, too, is taut and pink with exertion, wearing a look of deep concentration as she lifts and lowers, lifts and lowers with her hands on his chest.

He’d done a lot of things in his life just to prove to himself that he could, but nothing about this was something he was doing for sport. Being with Rey was his birth and his new beginning, the religious experience of being discovered and named by a woman. She’d uncovered a part of him that had always been there, a part that he himself had never known existed.

He moves his elbows so he can raise both of his hands up to her. His palms face up toward the ceiling, and she rests her hands on top of his and lets their fingers intertwine into fists as she uses the leverage he’s given her to push down on him more powerfully.

“Rey! Oh, _fuck ...”_ he whispers violently into the air.

Her hands slip out of his as she comes very suddenly, and he barely manages to catch her in the sweat on his chest. She spasms, ass shaking as he buries his tongue in her mouth.

“You are, you know,” she tells him, after a blissful few seconds. “Full of yourself.”

He can’t help but reply, “You’re full of me, too.”

He doesn’t know who laughs harder following that: him, at his blissed-out, ecstatic stupidity, or her, at his joyous ease with himself that she is so obviously the source of.

* * *

She is laid out on her stomach with her breasts on his lap.

“I should make you call me _sir_ again,” he says as he traces one hand down her spine.

“Or,” she turns to him, bracing one hand on his bare thigh, “you could call me _ma’am._ And then we’d be even.”

He laughs, not looking at her, as he writes his name on her ass.

“Why don’t you watch your movies?” he hears her say quietly. When he looks at her, her face is turned deliberately away from him, staring out the glass doors to the ocean.

“Don’t like to,” he tells her, frowning down at her back. “I’m always thinking of what I could have done better.”

She waits a minute to let his words fall, and then: “I am, too,” she sighs. “Always thinking of what I could’ve done better.” She turns to him, and for the millionth time he celebrates the fact that her eyes are hazel and green and brown and _his._ “Thankfully, somehow, that doesn’t stop me from enjoying what I have now.” She shrugs.

“Look at you,” he murmurs, one finger tracing her lips. “So full of joy. All the energy in the world, wrapped in this mouth, these eyes ...” She grins, too-wide into his fingers, and he laughs as she pretends to bite at him before sitting up.

“You don’t have energy? I think my cunt over the past two hours would beg to differ.”

He winces. “Isn’t that — I mean, isn’t that word —”

“What, cunt? Oh, I say it all the time.” Her sex-tousled hair flies as she taunts him, her face too close to his. “Cunt, cunt, _cunt.”_

“Well, fuck,” he laughs as he grabs at her waist. “Fuck that.” He keeps chuckling as her hands find his dick.

“Please do,” she purrs coyly, and then he’s hard again.

He doesn’t tell her that she’s right and he just didn’t know it: that he’s been storing up all his energy just to be able to move violently inside of her, just to be able to tell her with his body what he isn’t yet ready to say in words.

They go at it like rabbits for another half an hour, and afterward, they talk, quiet murmurs in the dark of the muted hotel room. Outside, night is falling, so they keep a single bedside light on for the shadows to fall cozily over the wall.

He could listen to her talk all day: the way her voice rises and falls; the way she pauses to think about something and tilts her head just so; and he finds that suddenly he has all the patience in the world, patience he never found in himself before, to just let this girl _think,_ and think about what she wants to say to him.

He feels like the funniest man in the world when she laughs long and loud into the air, throwing her head back as her arms wrap around his shoulders again.

He feels like the most interesting man in the world when he tells her a brief story, a small anecdote of something that happened on set, something _he_ found intriguing that no one else seems to have noticed, and her eyes bug out and she puts a disbelieving hand on his chest as she asks him, “Really? That happened?” and he now feels like the most observant, thoughtful man who ever shared his thoughts with a woman.

He feels like the handsomest man in the world when she curls her hand around his neck with a shy smile, her other hand resting on the wall behind him as she rides him so smoothly it’s as though she’s molded flush to his cock, making the muscles in his groin sing and sending pleasure zapping up his spine till he comes with his head thrown back, hair shifting against the headboard.

“I don’t deserve this,” he mumbles at one point, his thumbs running repeatedly over her hip bones till he’s worn down a path that his mouth can follow.

He thinks of all the things he’s been and realizes he has no category for receiving what she is giving to him now.

“That’s all right,” she reassures him. “We can’t always feel we’ve only gotten what we deserve.”

* * *

Ben would never forget the last morning that was the last hour he would ever see her.

He had woken when it was still dark, and he made her wake up, too, by scattering slow kisses all along her spine and shoulders, till she pushed him away, smiling, and said, “Stop that,” so happily that he knew she wanted more. He stretched his body out above her and made love to her until he came, and then he watched very smugly as she wiped his cum off her thighs and slipped her wet fingers into her mouth without looking at him even once.

“Do you often wear heels when you’re going to the bathroom?” he asked her lazily as she tugs the pumps back on.

“Only when you’re watching,” she replied with an open-mouthed wink.

When he watched her strut off, she tripped over herself a little, her leg muscles trembling and wobbling like jelly, and he had to turn to the ceiling to hide the pride in his grin. She was giggling quietly to herself when she closed the bathroom door.

His phone died sometime overnight, so he plugged it into the wall and stared up the ceiling, remembering, and then — he got a text notification.

And then another.

And then another.

_He’s supposed to be at the airport at six o’clock sharp, and did he ever make it up to his hotel room, because nobody saw him at the screening or the afterparty, and where the hell has he been, because he hasn’t answered his phone for the past seven hours —_

He checked the clock in the room. _5:47. Shit._

He threw his clothes into his suitcase and let his eyes sweep the room for anything he’d forgotten.

But he hadn’t forgotten anything. The room was spotless, except for her ripped thong and her dress, crumpled at the foot of the bed.

Very faintly, he could hear that the faucet was still running when his phone immediately buzzed in his hand. He switched his suitcase to his left hand so he could take the call.

“Hux.” Ben was in the hallway. “Yeah, I — one sec.” He addressed the attendant. “This bag should be going to the airport —”

“You have to leave it downstairs, sir. The van is about to leave.”

“Downstairs? Yeah, one second, I — Hux, are you there?”

The attendant kept talking over Hux’s voice in his ear. “The front desk, sir; they know, but you really should have dropped it off sooner —”

Somehow he was running without running, then he was actually running, toting his suitcase here and there. Hux was waving him down frantically from the glass doors outside the lobby, but Ben lifted a hand to signal him to wait, and then he was dashing back to the elevator, because there was one thing in his room that he absolutely could not ever forget.

But when the card lock beeped and he pushed open the door, all of the lights were off, and the room was cold and empty.

He turned on all the lights in every single room, as though she were hiding and all he had to do was get her to come out of the dark … as though by wanting her to be there she would suddenly appear.

But there was nothing in the room, no note or pad of paper or joyful, beautiful woman: just a ripped thong in the trash can and the smell of perfume dissipating mercilessly into the air.

He sat on the bed for far too long — so long they essentially missed their flight. He was short with everyone he talked to for the rest of the month, and he refused to tell anyone who he’d been with that night. He did, however, hear her whisper, _“I want to call you mine”_ every night into his ear for the next five months ... till he finally stopped sleeping because all he did was dream of her.

* * *

“Why did you go, Rey?” Sweat is beading on his forehead.

 _“You’re_ the one who left, not me.” Her low voice is still as rich and decided as he remembers, but the hand holding up her dress trembles and shakes very badly. The deep green of her eyes is like lightning through his body.

“I came back.” The words are like dust in his mouth. Ben begins to self-flagellate, not knowing if it will salvage anything. “I never should have left without you. _Stupid,_ idiot, I was a fucking _idiot —”_

Nearby, a camera person turns their head.

Rey isn’t faring much better. Her free hand not holding her dress gestures wildly in his general direction. “All your things were _gone._ There was no bloody _trace_ of you —”

“I found out which catering company you worked for.” He interrupts her, jaw rolling. “They told me you’d already quit, and they didn’t know where you’d gone.”

“I never called the number you gave me,” she huffs in response. “I thought I would be able to make a life without you.” She is proud, so proud and beautiful, and is it his imagination, or is her voice a degree gentler as she speaks?

“She told me you never called. But I had to find you.” When he takes a step closer, his chest rises and falls, and when she doesn’t move away, he lets himself hope. His voice is rough when it leaves the rock-bottom of his heart:

“Why does the world try to keep us apart?”

Her lips curve downward, and she says in a muted, fading voice, “Every time your name came up, on this film or that film, I thought about what we had.” She blinks, and something shines, but she swipes it off her cheekbones. “And I wondered … who else got to have that with you.”

Finally, blessedly, she meets his eyes. He isn’t imagining now; there are tears in her left — no, _both_ of her eyes.

“There’s been no one else. It will always be you.” He is reaching now, with his heart and with his hand. He feels it again, the pull from his soul to hers.

 _“Please,”_ he whispers. “Don’t leave me.”

Her face shifts, then grows immeasurably strong. Her voice makes a decision for them.

“Never, Ben. I’ll never leave you.”

And the flashes that suddenly surround them will never outshine the joy in his heart when she crosses into his arms and he feels her fingers on his chest.

Carefully, devotedly, she grazes his chin with her lips, as though to ask him a question she already knows the answer to. But his arms are already cradling her legs and sliding behind her back. He lifts her off the ground and into his body like a bride.

He bends his head down to slide his nose through her hair. “So beautiful,” he sighs before she exposes her neck to him, and then he is buried in her in a claiming kiss. Their bodies press flush and trembling against each other, and the roar of the watching crowd is drowned out only by the wash of relief that pools in Ben’s soul.

* * *

The sun on his forehead might be dangerously close to burning his skin, but the cool breeze from the ocean negates any fear of pain that he has; that, and the heat he can feel from her eyes.

Every time their eyes meet, it’s just like that first day, where when he looks at her, he feels like he could run a hundred miles. He feels like he could dance in the street, find the joy he never thought he possessed, if he just looks at her and lets her eyes give him the deep strength of heart he didn’t realize only she could lend him.

Life isn’t just hard or difficult when he looks at her. Life is hard, and sure, it’s difficult, but it’s also _worth it,_ as long as he knows that she is near him.

 _“Yes,_ please stay turned just like that, sir. Keep looking down, and now pretend to adjust your bowtie slightly …”

His left hand is lifted by his neck as the photographer captures his hand in motion. He gets to admire her new haircut, the way she’s confident in her outfit, as she gets photographed on her own, face serene and picture-perfect until she stares back up at him with a too-wide smile and a wave.

“Would you like to join your friend, sir?” The photographer’s question breaks his reverie. The other man nods meaningfully down at Rey.

Ben reflects with the compassion that Rey has lent him every day, and decides the other man simply just doesn’t know any better. “She _is_ my friend.” He looks back down at her thoughtfully before adding more quietly, “She’s also my wife.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [chagrins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chagrins) for the beta, and to [midnightmorningcoffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightmorningcoffee) for always dreaming with me. 
> 
> Happy New Year 💙 Here's to each year being better than the last.


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